


unless there's magic, the end will be tragic

by alitbitmoody



Series: The Family That Finds You [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Batdad, Batgirl is somewhere, Duela Dent has issues respecting boundaries, Future Fic, Gen, Ivy is a good auntie, M/M, Married Couple, POV Alternating, Police Brutality, Protective Parents, family drama in the middle of a Batman comic, so is Deathstroke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-01-16 17:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18526006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alitbitmoody/pseuds/alitbitmoody
Summary: Oswald gets the call at the lounge at 9pm on a Thursday night -- Etheline, their fifteen-year-old daughter has been arrested.12 hours in the life of a supervillain family in crisis.





	1. Penguin

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks to [Basilintime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basilintime/pseuds/Basilintime) for beta reading, giving notes, and being awesome in general.

Being who they are and choosing to live the way that many of them do, the survivors of Gotham’s “no man's land” know there are precautions to be taken when it comes to loved ones; no matter your situation or means.

Oswald has been hyper aware of that fact almost to the point of obsession -- since his mother and that first slip-up with Martin. He slowly re-builds his framework for how to handle it over time, as more than a decade passes after reunification. More than a decade after they brought his son home.

That day in particular sticks out in his memory, as perfectly preserved as a gunshot to the chest or two stabbed bodies lying in grisly repose: Martin’s boarding school uniform rumpled and dirty, tousled uncut hair curling around his ears as he springs up from his hiding place in the backseat of a stolen Chevy Bel Air. Not about to be left behind this time, safekeeping or no. Coupled with Martin’s determined expression is Edward’s reaction from the driver’s seat (which Oswald has to turn to see with his non-bandaged eye), mouth still and calculating as the air crackles between the three of them.  
  
_“We’re already 70 miles out,” he says, eyes bright. Decision made._  
  
_“I’ll call the school,” Oswald replies, something alight in his chest for the first time in months._  
  
It’s the moment they became a family. With the addition of their daughter a year later, they became a family of four.

He knows that Edward, too, is aware that they have made themselves (and continue to make themselves) an attractive target. Any number of heat-seeking missiles could take aim at one or both of them from any direction and get one of their children instead.

So, they make contingency plans early on -- both kids are tutored at home until high school. They hire a nanny (Roxy Rocket, newly paroled and eager for a new, non-thrill seeking challenge). They choose their “good friend” and newly-appointed police commissioner to be the godfather to their second child; all key strategies to protect them against most forms of potential retribution.

The trouble with that last detail is, of course, Commissioner Gordon, being only human, is unable to watch every detective and uniformed officer in his charge every minute of the day.

And so Oswald gets the call at the lounge late one night -- Etheline has been picked up by the GCPD at an outdoor concert, for "loitering, smoking, being out past curfew, resisting arrest, assault on a police officer." None of which sounds right (apart from the smoking, which is a small rebellion she’s launched in the last few months to Oswald’s chagrin). Because the commissioner is currently away from the office and because the lock-up at headquarters does not have a “sufficient holding cell for a female minor child,” they have also graciously escorted his fifteen-year-old daughter to the juvenile detention facility in Arkham to wait out the night before arraignment.

The tone of the call is too remote to be gloating, hedging and nervous when he demands to know why the arrest protocol for minor, first-time offenders (hold the child at the station, call the parents to pick them up) has been so roundly ignored. Void of any inherent threat or malice -- something that might indicate that one of the other rogues had infiltrated the ranks of the department; something they might have been prepared to deal with.

But there’s nothing. Only Occam’s Razor: some uniformed nobody has gone seriously off-book and the rest of the department are simply circling the wagons in anticipation of what comes next.

The disorganized, _amateur_ effort only compounds the terror that floods him; the familiar feeling of his stomach being torn out without anesthesia, a gaping hole in the core of his existence where someone he loves was just a moment before. He sees no reflection of it in the people around him -- apart from Edward, whose eyes flash a panicked morse code at him from across the crowded room, a cellphone to his own ear.

They need to get her back. Now.

He spends the next two hours doing what he does best: screaming himself hoarse at underlings, Arkham's directors, and Jim Gordon's voicemail. Meanwhile, Edward does what he does best: scanning 3D graphics of the facility while monitoring the trackers in their daughter's cell phone (found on site by Ms. Rocket, broken) and boots (currently on the ground level of the facility, possibly the processing area), looking for the quickest escape hatch in the shortest window of time.

"Remind me: why didn't we send Roxy with her in the first place?" Oswald asks, staring at the phone in his hand.

"We did," Ed replies, counting ammunition. Nine millimeter, hollow points, only the best for the Arkham staff. "From a respectable distance of 500 feet."

Making it all the easier for the squad car to avoid the tail by the time the former stunt woman and jewel thief could descend from her perch and run to her own vehicle.

"Why didn't we make it a hundred feet? Or _three feet_ ?!"

"You know why."

“...yes, I do.” Oswald feels the phone’s plastic casing give under the tension in his clenched fingers.

Their daughter is stubborn — she comes by this naturally. And she has informed them more than once in the past year that the other kids _do not_ go to school (or to parties, or to concerts) with a paid driver and escort. Evidently, this sort of thing has gone out of fashion since Bruce Wayne was in school and she finds it personally degrading.

Her method of presenting an argument is persuasive and, when there’s something she wants, she has a habit of tackling the two of them first together then separately. Martin taught her once that this was the ideal approach: let them present a unified front and then break them down individually until each agrees to appeal to the other. It works. Too often. The underworld’s best interrogators could learn a thing or two from their children.

Ed continues loading the magazine and patting down the spare ammo compartment on his belt. He’s dressed in his Riddler suit, opting for the shorter jacket rather than the tail coat or the closer fitting gear he wears when he has to scuttle through air shafts. The current plan appears to be to walk right through the front door; refuge in audacity.   
  
“Besides, she went with Duela Dent. Even the daughter of a disgraced former prosecutor has a security detail that's paid to protect her."

"Paid to protect _her ,_ " Oswald replies, staring at the guns on the desk, the flip phone still open in his hand, annoyingly silent...

"And if it had been anyone but the GCPD, they would have protected Etheline, too. Or at least intervened." Ed grabs one of them, sliding it into the holster at the small of his back, under the jacket. The other into the smaller one strapped to his calf under his pants leg.

There’s a flash of memory here, too: a filthy infirmary, where Riddler had popped out of a wall panel to drag him, bloody and still concussed, through an emergency stairwell to the street; drawing the pistol from his holster to ward away crowds of patients and med staff between them and their getaway vehicle. But, of course, that break-out had been planned over the course of a few weeks. And he had at least known that Ed was coming...

Oswald meets his gaze, hazel eyes just murky enough to know the cool resolve Ed exudes is not complete. His own pale eyes are stormy in the reflection of his partner’s glasses, tears building at the rim that he refuses to acknowledge or reach for. Ed thumbs it away instead, cupping his face in a gloved hand.

“It’s going to be okay.”

Oswald grips his wrist loosely, feeling another tear break free, running down to pool along the seam of Ed‘s thumb.

"You have a plan?"

"I have an idea."

"An idea is _not_ a plan, Ed!" he says, slamming his phone on the desk between them, dimly registering the clatter of broken pieces. "I'm not going to lose two of you in one night!"

"You're not going to lose _either one of us_ \--"

The argument is cut off when Oswald’s phone rings, making both of them jump. Not his cell, not the burner he just broke in half on the desk. The antique Bakelite that sat on Elijah’s work table in the manor for decades and now sits on his desk, little more than an ornate paperweight and occasional bludgeoning tool. The number is unlisted, hardly used unless Ed or one of the kids loses their cell and, then, only in the event of an emergency.

It rings and it rings.

He picks it up after the fourth ring.

"Yes?"

 **"WAIT."** **  
**

He knows that voice. And the shock on his face must register with Ed, who reaches across to try and grab the receiver.

"Oswald...?"

He holds up a hand, turning away slightly.

"It's Arkham," he replies to the voice on the phone, cursing himself for the bare grief that invades his tone without permission. "We _can't_ wait."

**"Help is already on the way."**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There hasn't been a great deal written about Enigma's background in the comics -- she's not given a second parent or even a first name. For the purposes of this story I went with "Etheline" (to open the door for another E. Nygma in the rogues gallery) and I tweaked her character design a bit. Roxy Rocket comes from the animated series where she works as a jewel thief for Penguin. I enjoyed the idea of bringing her in in another role and I thought she would be a hilarious, somewhat terrifying nanny. 
> 
> Fun fact: the only juvenile detention facility on the DC Wikipedia page is the Jump City Juvenile Correction facility in _Teen Titans GO_. The idea of Arkham having a juvenile detention area is explored in [Amethystawakening's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amethystawakening/pseuds/Amethystawakening) [_Death in Paradise_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14081457/chapters/32442750), which is an amazing story and everyone should read it!


	2. Riddler

Etheline arrives on their doorstep at nine in the morning, twenty minutes after her godfather, who sped home early from his vacation to coordinate with them in their living room. They’re all still dressed in their clothes from the night before and the conversation has shifted to shouting and finger-pointing -- mostly between Jim (who is focused on Riddler's latest caper and how it's contributed to the station's poisonous atmosphere) and Ed (who points out that Jim has _never once_ failed to use loved ones against him when it suits his pious reasoning), with Oswald maneuvering angrily between them. All three of them freeze when the front door clicks open, then shut.

Ed feels a lump in his throat as the tiny figure of his daughter steps into the archway. Her normally pinned auburn hair is loose and stringy, mascara and eyeliner smeared, face pink and blotchy. The peasant blouse and velvet jacket she left the house in the night before are in a paper bag at her side and, for some reason, she's elected to wear Arkham's trademark striped smock home over her Capri pants and boots, unbuttoned at the neck.

The two of them surge forward as one. Oswald gets there first, grabbing the child who's still shorter than him (even in 3” wedges) in a bear hug, stroking her hair; leaving Ed to bracket his arms around both of them, a protective cage large enough for two.

"My baby," Oswald murmurs, voice abruptly thick with tears. "Thank god. Are you alright?"

"Did you know... that there's a big trade racket in Arkham JD?" she asks, voice flat, spaced out with sleep deprivation. "I started out with a leather wristband and two glow sticks and ended up with $100, an old paperback and a cruller. That's my basic needs met _and_ half my monthly allowance. So, _thank you_ for that."

That last statement is directed at Jim, who just stares at his god-daughter, open-mouthed, words having apparently deserted the former detective.

Ed thinks if he had met his daughter at this age instead of age three — in the vestibule of the precinct or crossed paths while configuring a new grand scheme — the flush of admiration he feels would be more pronounced. Now, it's swamped by other emotions, closer to the day he and Oswald found her and Martin hiding in a razed building in the Bowery, standing over the body of a luckless captor and clutching her older brother's hand: concern, devastation, overwhelming protectiveness.

“Etheline--”

"Oh, by the way," she says, stepping forward and pulling a crumpled bill from her back pocket. She holds it out to him like an offering. "This is for badge number 892A -- 20 percent is a reasonable finder's fee, right? I know it's probably not as much as he got for throwing me against a squad car but, hey… I was only in there for four hours."

The quiver in her lip belies the blithe tone: off-center, held in check by defiance, so like Oswald it pains Ed in places he thought were long-healed or at least numbed. Watching Jim Gordon wait her out in the same placating fashion sets off a cold rage in him that he does his best to transmute.

"Enigma," he whispers, combining both of her middle names into her favored nickname, low enough that only she and Oswald can hear, and in a tone that perhaps Oswald alone recognizes.

She drops the bill on the carpet at Gordon's feet before turning on both of them.

"I'm going to my room,” she says, breezing past them, her gait forceful as she heads for the stairs. “I'm too tired for this right now."

Ed waits a few seconds before following at a respectful pace, leaving Oswald to deal with their guest.

\--

Etheline's bedroom once belonged to her late Aunt Sasha and was later occupied for a time by Brigit Pike; so chosen for the ornate fireplace on the far wall opposite the bed. Stripped of anything bearing the former’s memory when Oswald took the house back from his larcenous step-family, there is a lingering scorch mark up the far wall curving down toward the mantelpiece to memorialize Firefly’s tenure; unperturbed by ten years and two coats of paint. When a school friend staying the night had pointed out the ghoulish nature of sleeping in the same room as two alleged killers, Etheline had perkily pointed out that a _confirmed_ killer had slept in every room of the house at one time or another.

Of the room’s original furnishings, only the antique four-post canopy bed remains, topped with a patchwork quilt of their daughter’s favored royal blues and teals and, recently, a hand-tatted black lace canopy rescued from a trunk in the attic. By the time Ed knocks on the door, she’s seated on the end of the bed, boots and uniform top discarded, eyes glazed over as she stares at the opposite wall.

She looks up when he enters the doorway, a slow blink and shrug signalling permission to enter.

He gives a small nod of thanks, moving to sit next to her on the end of the mattress, eyes drawn to the banked fire. Arkham’s uniforms make for satisfying, if slightly ineffective kindling -- he and Oswald have burned enough of theirs over the years to know.

“Have you read this before?” she asks, handing him the book she smuggled out of the detention center; dogeared, pages rippled from water damage. He examines the cover, flips through the first few pages idly. Camus’ _The Stranger._ A fitting title to be passed around a child’s prison.

“A long time ago.” Like so many books, he had read it by the light of a flickering exposed bulb in a second-floor closet. Before he learned how to construct his own lock picks, before his father knocked the bookcase over on him, splintering particle board and fracturing two of the bones in his right ankle. His very first cell; like so many others, not built well enough to hold him.

“The kid seemed eager to trade,” Etheline says. “It was... kind of creepy, actually.”  
  
"Perhaps he was trying to get rid of it -- it’s not exactly the most _uplifting_ narrative," Ed ventures, setting the book off to the side.

They lapse into an easy silence, broken only by the sound of the fire breaking down the cotton-polyester blend of the uniform and the crinkle of waxed paper.

"So, I take it Aunt Ivy broke you out?"

His daughter responds by taking a vigorous bite from her pastry, then abruptly shoving the rest of it into her mouth.

 _"Wah woodchu ask me dat?"_ Eyes wide, micro-expressions obscured by chewing. Her poker face when asked a direct question has significantly improved. Ed can’t help but laugh at the spectacle and the resurgent flush of pride that runs through him..

"Well, for one thing, that cruller you’re eating is from the vegan bakery you both love so much."

Her expression stills for a long moment -- eyes narrowed, cheeks puffed like a squirrel -- morphs into careful chewing, swallowing what he hopes is a mostly masticated bite.

"...good catch.”

“Thank you.”

“Aunt Ivy picked me up,” she replies, wiping sugar glaze on the knees of her pants. “Someone else broke me out. They dropped me off at the payphone on E Street and I dialed her signal. She said I looked like I could use breakfast."

"Why didn't you call one of us?"

"I didn’t have my phone. And if one or both of you was already out there, I didn't want to interrupt. The last thing you need is your phone ringing when you're crawling through a vent system or a drop ceiling... Why _did_ you have your phone turned on that time?"

Because both she and Martin had been home with chicken pox and he had wanted Oswald to have a life line if he got stuck or overwhelmed. That small courtesy had cost him half of their projected haul when he'd been forced to cut and run early.

None of which their daughter explicitly needed to know.

"That’s a good reason," he nods, disregarding the second part of the question. "So, who _did_ break you out?"

"You won't believe me."

"Of course I will."

"You won't. _I_ still don't believe me," she scoffs once, shaking her head; takes a deep breath. "... I’m a mammal but I’m not a whale. I can fly but I’m not a plane. I’m a man -- _maybe_ \-- but also much more than that ."

Ed does his best to contain his reaction, which is a mix of shock and reflexive distaste. The masked criminal vigilante had strung him from a lamppost, after all. Put him back in Arkham (however briefly). Put them on the run and undercut so many of their plans in the last few years, forcing him and Oswald to think creatively; to make alternative strategies to prop up unexpected variables... and _still_ watch as something they would have cinched easily a decade earlier unraveled in increasingly unexpected ways.

"...I see,” he finally replies, still feeling as though the bottom has dropped out of the room. “Well. We shall have to find a way to thank him."

"I already did,” she replies, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “He's actually really nice. I know he’s not a friend of yours. Or Dad's. But I was in _real trouble_ when he found me. I asked if we could just drive around for a bit, he said yes. He didn’t ask questions and he didn’t blame me and that… that hasn’t happened much lately.”

Ed blinks, rubs his eyes with both his forefingers -- an ancient tic, long repressed and long recurring. He swallows around the lump in his throat.

“Did he say anything else?”

“Just that you guys love me,” she sniffles, rubbing her eyes. “That trying to catch you doing something stupid when you were desperate was ‘not justice.' That they never should have involved me."

Ed agrees.

"Good sense of fair play there."

"I'm not apologizing to Uncle Jim. I know it's not really his fault but..."

But she had needed him and he hadn't been there. And, not only that, he had failed to sufficiently establish that retaliatory measures were off-limits now that the rudimentary shame of attacking or manipulating a child was no longer a barrier for his officers.

There are rumblings downstairs -- Gordon’s trademark growl and Oswald’s familiar high-pitched shout muffled by and  steel and concrete. Ed can predict the highlights of Jim's argument without hearing them verbatim: a formal statement, something he can use to justify booting the officer for good or getting him to give up any conspirators. The presence of reliable evidence is paramount if he is going to deal with this formally.  
  
He can also hear Oswald's fierce rebuttal that a badge number should be plenty to deal with it formally, never mind the tracking data that shows Etheline being taken from the left bank on a circular path around the city, in limbo for hours before the green dot on the screen made an abrupt dash for the Arkham district. The data clearly displays that, despite the phone call, they never even took Etheline to the station for processing. There will be no mugshot, no fingerprints or statement taken, no arrest file -- meaning, of course, if pressed, the officer and the precinct could then say that it did not happen. (A textbook maneuver the GCPD had enacted quite a lot in the years before the Wayne murders; Ed had seen the process firsthand). Leaving them with a phone call from the precinct that will likely be disavowed, the testimony of a former jewel thief who spotted the incident from 200 yards away, and that of a frightened victim -- the last of which Jim Gordon cannot have.

Of course, he and Oswald are certainly happy to keep the matter _informal._ In which case, it’s best if their former “colleague” makes himself scarce anyhow.  
  
"You don't have to apologize,” he says. “I’d say he's off the visitor's list in this house for a while.”

"Babs can still come to my birthday party next month, right?"

"I see no reason to turn your dearest friend away just because you threw dubiously clean money at her father," he replies, provoking a light chuckle against his shoulder. "Why wasn't _she_ with you last night?"

"Homework," Etheline scoffs, almost affectionately. "She's a nerd."

"Hmmm."

A soft knock on the door startles them both.

Oswald has lost the jacket and switched from the monocle to his half-rim spectacles -- evidence that their company has departed and the formal battle armor can therefore be dropped.

"Martin's coming home for the weekend,” he announces. “We're going to pick him up from the airport at six. I'm taking the full day off and so are both of you."

There’s a pulse of relief dousing the anxiety Ed would ordinarily feel about delaying a project of this magnitude -- particularly with the short window of time he has in which to complete it. He feels like a train ran over him at full speed and the adrenaline he would have poured into placing his third and fourth round clues got derailed by a frantic phone at 9pm on a Thursday. All of which he’s sure Oswald can read on his face, plainly as anything else.

"Thank you," he sighs, locking onto pale green eyes.

Oswald nods, eyes murky before switching his focus to the tiny girl under his husband’s arm. "Anything you want today, Etheline. You can have it."

"Right now, I just want to _sleep,_ Daddy,” she says, swinging her legs up and scooting back to lie on the mattress. “They made me sit on a backless bench forever."

"Okay, we'll have lunch delivered. How does Thai sound?"

"Good," she says, nestling into the throw Edward lays across her, eyes already closed. "Target practice later?"

"Of course,” Ed replies too quickly, thinks about the targets stacked in their shed, Etheline’s normally careful precision plus the added stress… Oswald’s eyes flash at him, confirming his hesitance. “Perhaps tomorrow."

\--

Collapse happens quickly after they shut the door to their daughter’s bedroom. They don't even make it the length of the hallway to their own room when the tremor in Oswald's hands suddenly spreads to his whole body, taking out his good leg as well as the bad one.

“Easy, easy…” Ed catches him, guiding them both to the floor to crouch against the wall. Oswald turns into him and they’re suddenly a mass of overlapping arms and staggered breaths, white-knuckled and shaking. Every nightmare the two of them have had since those first stints in Arkham, every agony in the years since… it shrinks in the shadow of the last twelve hours, not knowing what had happened to their child or who might try to get to her in the place that had been the seat of their worst experiences.

"The voice on the phone," he murmurs against his husband's dark hair.

Deep breaths, staving off the hyperventilating Oswald's prone to during -- and, lately, _in the wake of_ \-- stressful situations.

"Yes," he answers, nearly whispering.

"That's why you stopped me."

_"Yes."_

Ed nods, feeling the analytical part of his brain sweep in, picking out details, something to add to the framework that already exists in his mind.

"He told her that her parents loved her. That using her against us was an injustice,” he thinks out loud. “Specifically mentioned her parents _and_ he called you."

Oswald glances up. "You have a suspicion."

"Several. Family is a broad trigger, but the mention of parents _plural_ \-- that’s rather significant.” And the situation of a child getting caught up in the maw of an attack on said parents had moved him to act — against the police no less. One more crucial detail toward solving the puzzle of their most dangerous obstacle. "Something else, too: Barbara Gordon skipped the concert to do homework last night."

"...Ed, please don't tell me you think Barbie Gordon is Batman?"

" _No!_ of course not! Maybe. I don’t know, Oswald,” he pauses, contemplative. It would _technically_ fit most aspects of the current profile. “...if she is, I know who took our missing bondage rope."

" _Ugggghh_ . I don't want to think about that! It's been a long night."

"I know," he laughs, dropping a kiss across his husband's cheek, skirting around to his lips, already parted.

“Tomorrow. Badge 892A.”

So they are not going to wait on Jim and the official channels. Good. Ed grins against Oswald’s lips, mentally counting the sharp implements in the weapons cabinet when the phone vibrates between them. He reaches into the pocket on his husband’s waistcoat to retrieve it, flipping it open to read the text.

“...unnecessary,” he says, surprised. “The officer was apparently delivered to the GCPD headquarters late last night. On the roof. Hog-tied with a note.”  
  
“Someone works fast.” A beat. “Oh god--”

“Does this mean we owe the Bat a _favor_?”

Oswald nods, absently, a deep sigh reverberating in his chest. More than one, most likely.

Ed tightens his arm around his husband’s shoulders, typing out a quick reply before hitting send. Oswald, eyes already wide as they take in the information, sends him a questioning look.

“I just told him ‘thank you.’” Jim could read between the lines about making sure the charges stuck and what would happen if he didn’t. A beat. “Should I ask him if the rope was purple?”

Oswald snatches his phone back in answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a bit of creative license with Enigma's clothing/costume design here — specifically her affinity for blue. In the comics, her villain motif is a mirror of Riddler's classic costume (biker tank with question mark, striped green and purple trousers). Here, her primary color palette is the various shades between her parents' favored colors on the color wheel.
> 
> Poor Ed -- presumably his profile he's been working on to unmask Batman is five years in the making and this is probably the most significant piece of info he's had in a while.


	3. Enigma

The events of an otherwise normal Thursday in the life of one Etheline Cobblepot: there’s an all-ages show at the Left Bank open air on the waterfront and she wants to go.

It should not be a big deal that she wants to go. Her favorite jazz ensemble is opening for a prominent, national pop group that she has zero interest in. Yes, it’s kind of far from the manor (and the lounge, and the safe house she woke up in when she was three) and _yes,_ it’s technically a school night, but she has near perfect attendance at the academy this year and if she stays just for the opening act, she can text Roxy to come get her and have her home by maybe ten o'clock, eleven at the latest.

Simple. Reasonable. All so simple.

But, of course, rules are rules -- if she wants to go, she can’t go by herself. She would prefer a friendly face for company, but the list of people who would usually come with her is... uncommonly sparse these days.

Dad has work at the club. Papa has “work” (which she suspects has something to do with the theft of the Pollock forgery from the Gotham Art Museum). Martin is wrapping up the spring semester at university in Star City and finals week has him on the run. Babs has homework -- some super secret, advanced placement computer science independent study that her oldest friend “can’t really explain” and Etheline stops listening two seconds into her long winded apology.

Duela’s… not all there. Not _exactly_ friendly, even though she started off their sophomore year telling everyone at the academy that she was also Penguin’s kid (lie) which made them “sisters.” And her fashion choices of late are veering dangerously close to the punk rock inmate pantomime of the old cult of Jeremiah Valesca, who she has also been referring to as her “true father”... but, whatever. In the end, she’s the only one who says yes.

None of this is ideal and at least Duela has a car – a _real_ car (well, a van). _Not_ , Dad is quick to point out, what he would call a car.

“I’m not showing up to the concert in a car _with a driver_ , Dad. It’s humiliating.”

Sputtering. There is sputtering, followed by a deep intake of breath. “Having security immediately available… may not always be the most _dignified_ , young lady. But the esteemed reputation of your young life is not my biggest concern -- your safety is. Roxy’s going with you.”

“Not this time she isn’t,” she shoots back. “I don’t have a ticket for her.”

“Left Bank shows are general admission, festival seating, cash at the door,” he retorts with a familiarity that rankles, making her wonder if there is a raver and/or techno-punk history in her father’s past that runs counter to the intimate cabaret experiences he prefers these days. “Don’t insult my intelligence. _Roxy goes with you._ ”

Definitely humiliating.

“Okay,” she concedes. “I’ll agree to go along with this. She can accompany me. But can the three of us agree on a conversational distance of say 500 feet? Like a T.R.O?”

“Do we need to be concerned that she knows what T.R.O. stands for?” That’s Papa, _sotto voce,_ hovering at Daddy’s shoulder and dropping two cups of tea between them (ginger bergamot, no sugar for Daddy, two lumps for her).

The sputtering ceases for a moment as he takes a long sip of his tea.

“I’m not that surprised. We did take out two of them against the police department last month,” he replies, before turning back to Etheline. “What makes you think this is a negotiation?”

“Isn’t everything?” she asks, taking a sip of her own tea; warm, not hot, just sweet enough.

“We _could_ have Query and Echo go with her.” Still whispering, close to Dad’s ear now, which turns into a brush of lips across his temple and Etheline suddenly feels like she should reassert control of the conversation before the subject is forgotten and she’s kicked out of the study with a door latch thrown behind her.

“Nina and Deidre are your friends, Papa, not mine.”

She knows she’s clinched her victory when the chair squeaks across the floor as it’s pushed back from the desk.

“Excuse me! Do _I_ need to be concerned that she knows who Nina and Deidre are?”

\--

In the end, Duela’s van comes equipped with an armed guard and _au pair_ named Wilson, and that, combined with Roxy’s agreement to follow the party from a distance, seems to appease everyone involved. All the same, Etheline is quick to dash out and jump in the van before Dad and Papa actually _see_ him. Or Duela. Or Duela’s outfit.

(If Duela is going to keep telling everyone that they’re “sisters,” Etheline thinks, she really needs to stop grabbing her butt when she greets her. But that’s a discussion for another night.)

\--

May in Gotham on the riverfront is a muggy melange of sounds and smells; dusk coloring everything a deep blue with flashes of garish gold from the streetlamps and stage lights, the smell of sweat, stale beer, and river water. They arrive just too late to get a good spot close to the stage and Etheline’s beginning to resent both the six deep row of much taller people in front of her and the fact that Martin couldn’t come. He or Papa had always boosted her on their shoulders if she needed to see.

Roxy Rocket and her best night vision binoculars situate themselves from her own high vantage point somewhere in the comfortable distance of the next street over. Etheline smiles when she gets the regular text, checking in:

_‘I see you, little bird.’_

She hopes Roxy doesn’t let it slip to her father that she’s smoking. Or that she’s borrowed his cigarette holder.

“Jazz is a defunct art, you know,” Duela sneers a bloody red smile as she lights Etheline’s cigarette. Two of her front teeth are broken, giving her scoff a sinister air, even as her voice rushes out like a tinkling toy piano. “Antique bullshit.”

As if the lighter she was using wasn’t an antique pilfered from her own (real) father’s desk (the face of Janus stamped on the side with a massive scratch down the middle, of course). As if they didn’t live in Gotham, where virtually everything was a replica or a simulacrum of a bygone era, hammered and retooled to fit an aesthetic shaped by loss and isolation.

“Why’d you come then?”

“You asked me to. Is that not a good enough reason?”

“I wouldn’t have asked you if I knew you were going to be miserable the whole night,” she says tapping a line of ash into the pavement.

“Not miserable,” Duela smirks. “Just briefly appalled. Also a bit thirsty. Wilson!”

The burly _au pair_ appears as if by magic, no doubt toting Duela’s wallet and all of her other essentials.

“Lemonade for me?”

“Beer for both of us.”

Etheline scowls. “Not my thing. And unless you’ve got a fake ID, I’m guessing not yours either.”

“The night’s just started after all. ‘Be right back.”

The conductor strikes up the band starts at 8:30.

The uniformed officer grabs Etheline after two songs.

\--

Dad is, at heart, a willful optimist. He hopes and strives for the best, but he also teaches her how to fight from the time she’s old enough to understand his instructions. Together, they go over how to slam her heel down with her whole body, all the places with soft tissue on a human body where she should gouge her fingernails in and pull, where to plunge a knife or a piece of broken glass. All should she be caught out in a moment where she’s cornered and there are no exits or adults to protect her.

Papa is, in contrast, a cool strategist. Complex puzzles within complex systems, plans upon plans and many of them from an early age have been plans for in the event that she is taken -- by social services, by rivals, or various “relatives.” They have multiple plans in place if one of her various aunties and uncles go off the rails and decide to grab her as leverage (or, in Auntie Harley’s case, because it’s Tuesday). He teaches her how to distract someone assigned to mind her, how to disable a vehicle when she’s trapped in it, how to slip out of zip ties and rope bindings, and how to hotwire a vehicle to facilitate a quick escape.

“You can always use your immediate environment to your advantage,” he tells her. “Remember that.”

\--

In concert terms, it’s sort of pathetic -- practically being busted at the entrance. She hasn’t had time to grab a drink yet. She only has two glow sticks. She’s smoked half a cigarette -- which is the very pretense that the uniformed officer seizes on to drag her from the crowd by her hair.

His reasonings are rapid fire and aggressive: she’s under sixteen, she’s smoking, she is unaccompanied (because her security team is 200 yards away and Duela and her “manny” are suddenly nowhere to be seen) and it’s technically past curfew on a weeknight. All things that have a reasonable explanation and there should be no cause for a man of the law to be unreasonable…

She’s halfway through typing a text to Roxy when he handcuffs her, throws her on the pavement, against the car, and, finally, into the back seat where she’s abruptly caged in.

He doesn’t like her attitude.

She suspects he was never going to like it, no matter what she said or did — but the tone of the statement still stings.  
  
\--

‘The plan for if you are picked up by the GCPD:’ be polite — _vigorously_ polite. Ask to speak with your parents, ask to speak with the captain or police commissioner. Be sure to mention that the police commissioner is _your godfather_ and that the captain was at your last birthday party (not invited, accompanying detectives serving a warrant). Mention that often at full volume. Don’t fight with them, but be firm. You know your rights and they do, too (however much they may claim ignorance in the moment).

“They will have to listen to you, eventually.”

\--

The backseat doesn’t have a seat belt -- not one she can reach with her hands cuffed anyway. It might not be too bad if the arresting officer didn’t insist on peeling out across the street at twice the legal speed. He continues to lap the district at the same speed, heedless to her pleads that he stop, slow down, she can’t get purchase.

When he finally does stop, her forehead collides with the grating on the divider and there’s a dark burst of stars behind her eyes.

The car lurches once and, flinching against the sudden ringing in her ears, she can make out what looks like a small figure running after them, fading quickly into the dark as the car jets off again.

He leaves her there — disoriented, nauseous, trapped —for what seems like hours while he gets gas and chats with another officer, fusses with his radio, laughs uproariously (gratuitously) about his “wild evening” and his “crazy luck.” The reek of gas fumes and greasy fast food floods her nostrils, compounding the motion sickness that has already pulled her stomach down a dark hole and beaded her forehead with a cold sweat. Every few seconds the perspiration streams down and back and she can feel the sting of salt in what has to be an open scrape from the grate.

_“‘Anyone called her folks yet?”_

_“Radio headquarters. The way I see it, this was all their idea anyway. If it gets the result they want, Gordon will slap a medal on their chest. After that, ring the JD -- I’m sure they'll be happy to take her..._ ”

A sob escapes her throat as she stares up at the roof of the car. She wants to kick the door, wants to pummel the break-resistant glass with her boots… but she doesn’t. There’s a mocking clatter of fists on the window anyway, making her stomach roll.

_“Cry all you want, princess! No one’s coming.”_

\--

There has never been a plan for what to do if she finds herself in Arkham. For any reason.

\--

There is no trip to the station in two and a half hours between her arrest at the left bank and the drop off at the juvenile facility in Arkham. No one fingerprints her. No one takes her statement. No paperwork is processed and she knows to the marrow of her bones that _can’t be right._

Nothing about this night has been right.

All the same, Arkham JD collects her upon delivery – possibly on name recognition alone. They leave the too-tight handcuffs on long after the officer drives away; laughing the whole time, so pleased with himself she wants to remove his teeth with a pair of pliers, or watch someone else do it.

They throw her on a bench with the other “bad kids” waiting to be processed. Squeezed between a skinny boy in a jean jacket who smells like kerosene and a chunky girl with a split lip that, at one point, was running down her chin, but has long since dried.

“Nice gear,” Skinny Boy smirks.

Etheline says nothing. Her lungs feel like they’re full of knives and the rest of her energy is going to keep her knee from bouncing.

“Did you know they got stuff in those that gets you high?”

Etheline briefly thinks the girl with the split lip is talking about her _breasts_ , before she realizes the pointed, blood-smeared chin is actually gesturing to the glow sticks, still emitting a toxic green flash under the fluorescent lights.

“...I think you might be thinking of something else,” she coughs, testing a voice that’s abruptly hoarse, as though she’s been screaming for hours. “...but you’re certainly welcome to find out. If you want.”

Illicit trade is alive and well at the JD and, apparently, it starts at the entrance.

Etheline actually doesn’t mind this bit. She’s become a bit of an expert in this area after almost two years at a private high school (swapping hair ribbons, glitter gel pens, badges) and it feels… almost normal.

This is the most normal thing that’s happened to her all night. The thought sends a giddy feeling through her stomach and chest, compounding the misery and fear as well as providing respite.

The longer they leave her there on the bench, the more time she has for covert interactions with her neighbors, palming her various trade-offs. The cash gets stuffed down the back of her capris, an old paperback up the back of her shirt and jacket so that the elastic on her bralette catches it. She refuses the wax-wrapped lemon drop one particularly crazed-looking kid offers, certain it’s laced with something that will only ensure she ends up in a padded room. It passes the time, most of which she spends staring at the wall and trying to catch the eyes of the receptionist at the desk -- if she has been arrested, she’s entitled to a call.

She wants her phone call. She wants her dad’s voice on the other end of the line -- apoplectic, high-pitched, full of righteous outrage. Or Papa, soft-spoken and soothing with a manic edge, promising without words that the person who did this is going to pay.

\--

Eventually, a security officer in gray comes to grab her from the bench. Drags her down the hall by one handcuffed arm and traps her in a room with another security officer — taller than both of them, beefier, female — who, it turns out, has been assigned to watch her undress (not closely enough, she misses the contraband, plus two bobby pins) and force her into the striped uniform Arkham issues to everyone.

" _Cobblepot, Maria Etheline Nygma_. That’s cute," her voice drips poison as she reads from the file folder in her hands; eyes made of broken glass and exposed rebar as she tosses a paper bag that Etheline has to stoop to catch before it hits the floor. “Strip and change into the uniform.”

“...I need to call my dad,” she manages, weakly even to her own ears.

“You ‘need’ to do what I say,” she replies, coldly. “I’m in charge here. Strip down to your underwear, put your clothes in the bag and put on the uniform.”

She shakes her head. “If I’m under arrest I have the right to a phone call. The officer who brought me in never processed me. I need to call my par---”

The slap across her face echoes off the concrete walls, filling her ears before the sting registers in her cheek and jaw. She’s never been slapped before -- only seen it happen to other people (Duela when her mother was having a fit, Babs when their math class was infiltrated by a former cop with a grudge… ). Her vision goes white and it’s like a part of her has been erased.

"You don't like it here, Miss Cobblepot? We’ve got a whole lot of rooms in this place I can guarantee you won’t like. You’ll like the women's block at Blackgate even less -- if you even make it that far.”

She can’t do that. They can’t do that. They can’t take her to an adult prison without cause, without charges.

“You can’t do… _you can’t._ ” Her voice breaks halfway through, lungs seized up, fingers and toes abruptly cold.

Because with no regard for what was allowed, what they could and could not do, they had no problems bringing her here. None of them had. Arbiters of law and order.

“Strip. Or I'll do it for you," the officer repeats, in a tone that indicates she would take great satisfaction in doing so.

She peels off her jacket incrementally, dropping it to the floor, followed by the peasant blouse, her cami, stiff as she feels the paperback slip down the small of her back, catching in the waistband of her capris. She’s acutely aware of the chill, goose-flesh popping up all over even as her neck and chest stain a deep, mortified red. Eventually, she gets the top on, fingers shaking as she attempts to fasten the large snaps at the collar…

And then the door explodes.

Explosions are more Papa’s thing. With Dad, she expects gunfire, maybe a smoke bomb designed to kill visibility.

It’s neither of them.

Batman is taller than both of her parents.  
  
Some of that is almost certainly augmented by the boots and modified combat gear he’s wearing, but his presence in that tiny room is enormous. Enormous, monolithic, and, somehow, not threatening. Not to her at least -- it seems to be at least _slightly_ threatening to the female CO, who makes a tentative grab for an ankle that he side-steps easily. Etheline watches with intense interest as consciousness slips away from the sadistic woman and she passes out with a heavy collapse on the floor; threat neutralized.

She gasps as a gloved hand appears in her periphery, palm up, as though offering escort. She takes it, fingers still shaking; in a daze as he walks with her through the hallway where everyone is suddenly, mysteriously, unconscious, the receptionist and guards zip-tied and bound together with what looks like multi-fiber cables. Hand in hand, they walk through the hallway, out the front door and the front gate to…

“Whoa…” She barely has time to register that the sleek, fortified vehicle -- or ‘Batmobile’ as the _Times_ has taken to calling it -- has a passenger seat. Oddly, she doesn’t even need to adjust it for her height when she steps inside. “Now _this_ is a car.”

**“Where to?”**

“I...I don’t know,” she shakes her head, feeling muzzy and lightheaded. “Umm...given where I just was, it’s probably not a good idea for you to show up at my house. Or the lounge.”

**“It’s your call.”**

“Can we just drive around? For the time being?”

He obliges.

\--

They drive around the city at what seems like a much more gentle pace than the death proof speed of the squad car.

Etheline watches the sky go from violet to cool blue to pink and orange through the tinted glass, while her rescuer occasionally switches music stations. She looks up when the music transitions from smooth instrumentals to a familiar piano and brass opening.

It’s the solid baritone humming under the chorus that finally prompts her to speak.

“Don’t tell me _you_ were at that concert?” she asks, turning to look at the man in the driver’s seat.

**“Okay. I won’t.”**

The Batman… a retro jazz fan. Well, if anything, that’s something she can pass along to Papa for his forensic profile. She wonders if he was watching from the same building as Roxy, possibly the rooftop.

“Do you have a favorite song of theirs?” she posits, earning a blank stare.“Well, _I_ like their version of _Body and Soul_ , but that’s me.”

The first 78rpm she had ever bought. Unable to locate the original track in Papa’s extensive library, she had made Babs walk with her through the historic sector on the way home from school and then dragged her inside the record shop. Forcing her friend to hold the ladder while she scanned the higher shelves close to the ceiling in search of her quarry; coughing at the dust that rained down with every displaced sleeve.  
  
And then the ladder had nearly tipped her off. Because Barbara had spotted a purse snatcher running down the street outside and taken off after them. Only just saved herself from falling by grabbing onto a lower shelf. The things she would do for a good song.

 **“Their rendition of** **_Am I Blue_ ** **is… not inadequate.”**

Etheline smiles for the first time all night.

“Appreciates the classics. You and my papa would have a lot to talk about.”

On balance, perhaps they wouldn’t.

They’ve run through the standards and are into the pop remixes when Etheline realizes she’s been staring at the dashboard through watery eyes for the last twenty minutes; punch-drunk, a weight of cold misery settled in her chest.

“I just wanted a night out. Like... a _normal_ night out.” Like she was a normal kid, who didn’t need a driver or a nanny with a gun to protect her from being abducted from a public place. “Was that so selfish?”

Batman says nothing. His own eyes are focused on the road and it's impossible to spot the gaze under the cowl in the dim lighting. But he retrieves something from the console between them with a mechanical hiss and a cloud of what looks like dry ice and holds it out to her. She takes it from his gloved hands, curious; a silver mylar pouch, photo of a sun and an apple on the side.

“...is this? Is this a _juice box_?”

 **“Vitamin C. Very important.”**  
  
“Okay, I’ll take it, but only because I don’t think you're trying to insult me here," she replies, peeling the straw from where it's glued to the side and tearing the cellophane off. "Thank you.”

**“You’re welcome.”**

\--

The sun is coming up when they arrive at the emergency payphone – one of several they have set up in the outskirts: otherwise normal phone, free for public use per a donation to the city, keypad set up with a small radio tracking signal keyed to a few trusted individuals. She’s mindful enough to not call attention to this specific phone when they pass it. Just hops out and makes her call – tapping out the third of a memorized list of emergency codes. She’s mumbles what might be mistaken for a voicemail message by anyone else before replacing the receiver and turning to the masked man standing behind her.

“You probably don’t want to be here when my next ride shows up either.”

He nods once, almost courtly in his formality.

“Thank you for what you did. Even if I don’t understand it.”

The details of her parents’ business, their past imprisonment, and, more recently, their “romantic evenings out” interrupted by Batman are a private matter. Not for prying (even if she does glean more than a few details from the _Times_ and gossipy classmates). She does know one of their more colorful excursions from a few years ago ended with both of them needing to be rescued by Martin -- from fifteen feet up a lamp post. Angry consonants over newspaper headlines, harried comments about “giant bats spoiling a good time.” Whatever their familiarity exactly is, it’s far from friendly.

And yet here they are.

**“What they did to you was wrong.”**

“Do you happen to know _why_ they did it? Because they didn’t seem all that eager to tell me,” she nearly whispers even in the open air of an abandoned factory district with no one else to hear her, throat aching.

**“Your parents love you very much. Certain law enforcement individuals have been frustrated by Riddler’s activities of late -- I suspect this was designed to trigger an excessive response on his part.”**

Entrapment. To catch Papa dead to rights breaking her out, or to catch _both_ of them doing something equally rash, thus ensuring that one or both of them would be locked up. Again.

The coldness of it makes the oxygen in her lungs lock up, unable to take in more... she thinks if she could breath, she would be heaving. Instead, she’s frozen in place, stuck at stiff angles, feeling her shoulders and hands shake.

 **“Contrary to what others may think, hitting people where they’re most vulnerable is** **_not justice_ ** **.”**

She hugs him. Or, it’s possible, she falls and Batman, ever chivalrous, steps forward to catch her. She’s unsure of the order of events or just how long they stand there, on the side of a desolate road in an empty industrial area.

“Thank you,” she says, a hot rush of shame for how watery her tone of voice is; wanting to stomp out that weakness in front of someone who is, most of the time for most of the people she knows, an adversary.

But he lifts a still gloved, leather clad arm to drape across her shoulders, a gentle pressure, full of warmth, and she cannot see this man as her adversary. At all.

She watches the car zip out of sight at a speed that should probably warrant concern. For other motorists… or possibly the dimensional barrier. Something.

Ivy Pepper’s green Chevy Malibu coasts up five minutes later. Adapted for bio fuel ages ago (“good for the planet, good to have lack of gas receipts”), the car always smells like french fries. Her godmother’s eyes widen as she takes in the uniform top, is out and she's darting around the front of the car before Etheline can even reach for the door.

Ivy wraps her in a hug, presses dry kisses against her brow, strokes her hair back from her face with gloved hands…

And, in that moment,when absolutely _nothing_ is wrong, she starts to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Twelve years earlier, as Etheline's full name is read out at the naming ceremony*  
> Harvey Bullock: "...oh crap, he named her after Fish."
> 
> The fact that this was finished just in time for Father's Day is a little bittersweet for me, twice over. Leave a comment? Let me know what you think?


End file.
